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Zarinah Agnew

Zarinah Agnew

Faculty

Zarinah Agnew is a neuroscientist by training. After spending over a decade in academia, they left to study the science of groups of brains - that is, humans in collectivity. Alongside their work with the college, Zarinah is Director of Research at the Collective Intelligence Project, which works to direct technological development towards the collective good.

On the side, Zarinah also runs three nonprofits aimed at experimental aspects of society, collective transformation and para-institutions. The Social Science Observatory is dedicated to the study of social science in the wild, Alternative Justices works towards abolitionist community-based harm prevention and response, and District Commons engineers experimental spaces where humans can ‘be otherwise’.

Together, these strands allow both the prefiguration of new social configurations, as well as the study of their transformational potential.

If you need or want to book a chat. I recommend booking at least one call with me in your first month. From that point on I am here if and when needed or wanted.

Topics

Zarinah Agnew

Collective intelligence as governance of AI, and AI for collective intelligence.

This topic covers the distinction between democracy and collective intelligence, why you might choose one over the other, and where they trade off. How does human CI and artificial CI intersect? What can societies of humans and agents can produce? What are the open questions?

Some examples

On human & agent societies

Zarinah Agnew

This topic covers issues of prediction, risk management and forecasting and how these tactics influence the future.

There is a difference between predicting what is likely given where we are now and the current conditions, compared to creating possibility. All too often futurism conflates these two. We'll explore methodologies for collective visioning and the political technologies of future-making.

Zarinah Agnew

This topic explores how groups of humans can exhibit emergent behaviors and intelligence that transcend what any individual could achieve alone. Drawing from neuroscience, complexity science, and social psychology, we'll examine the mechanisms that enable collective action and decision-making.

  • Why the collective? going beyond the individual brain

  • Emergence in social systems: The scientific principles behind how simple interactions between individuals give rise to complex collective behaviors - from flocking patterns to social movements

  • Collective Intelligence: When and why groups outperform individuals, exploring the conditions that foster collective problem-solving versus groupthink and social contagion

  • Social Technologies as Cognitive Extensions: How tools, rituals, institutions, and digital platforms extend our collective cognitive capacity and enable coordination at scale

Key Question: What transforms a collection of individuals into a genuinely collective intelligence capable of solving problems no individual could tackle alone?

Zarinah Agnew

This topic explores how collectives form boundaries and maintain coherence, the political technologies of inclusion/exclusion, and the science behind group identity formation. When do groups benefit from separation vs. engagement with larger systems?

  • Hirschman, Albert O. "Exit, voice, and the state." World Politics 31, no. 1 (1978): 90-107

  • Introduction from Ruti, Mari. The ethics of opting out: Queer theory's defiant subjects

  • B.F. Skinner – Walden Two

Zarinah Agnew

This topic examines the most basic unit of human collectivity beyond the individual. How do we organize intimate interdependence? What can alternative kinship structures teach us about care, resource-sharing, and decision-making at small scales? The family is often the laboratory for collective practices.

  • Lewis, Sophie. Abolish the Family. Chapter 1: "But I Love My Family!"

  • Helen Hester "Promethean Labors and Domestic Realism"

Zarinah Agnew

This topic examines how digital and biotechnologies reshape collective identity and coordination, exploring technological acceleration as a method for dismantling oppressive collective structures. Technology as a political tool for collective transformation.

  • Xenofeminist Manifesto (Laboria Cuboniks)

  • Lewis, Sophie. Full surrogacy now. Chapter 7: "Amniotechnics"

Zarinah Agnew

This topic explores what Indigenous and non-Western collective practices offer as alternatives to dominant organizational forms. How do postcolonial futures challenge Western models of collectivity? Decolonizing collective imagination and political technologies.

  • Lisa Yaszek. "Afrofuturism, science fiction, and the history of the future"

  • Octavia E. Butler. "Dawn"

  • Ronald Niezen. "Postcolonialism and the utopian imagination"

Zarinah Agnew

The ultimate collective challenge: organizing human societies within planetary boundaries while leveraging technological potential. This topic examines automation as political technology and ecological thinking as collective intelligence.

  • Bastani, Aaron. Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Chapter 3: "What Is FALC?"

  • Pepper, David. "Utopianism and environmentalism"

  • Ernest Callenbach – Ecotopia

  • "What Is Solarpunk?" solarpunkstories.com/what-is-solarpunk